Family's Not Limited To Species (When Your Brother Is A Fox)
by sctwilightvampwolfgal
Summary: Judy remembers just when Gideon Grey became her brother. *Inspired off of a prompt by Teddi 8347 that was on that writer's profile page.*


She wouldn't say that her childhood was that abnormal nor would Judy call it the most normal, but being a bunny in a bunny focused town meant that most people were prey rather than predators. It did not mean however that there were not predators or that they were all the kinds of ones that were easy to get along with. She'd call Gideon Grey, one of her worst bullies when they were little kids and a bunny was an easy target.

She'd call him her brother nowadays if you ever asked her. Judy remembers the day that everything changed like it was yesterday. The town was quiet, and she was out a little bit later than she really should have been. She'd been a risk taker even as a kid, and so sneaking out just as dusk was hitting was not beyond her. She had slipped down a small wooded trail and eased her way into town, where she became distinctly aware of sobbing, the kind that made anyone know that the world was ending for a person out there.

She paused, unsure of what to do. Judy wasn't any older than eight years old and comforting someone crying like that was not at all her strong suit. She'd rather go into battle or solve crime in some way, push herself through a rigorous routine than go sit down with someone crying like the world was ending. Judy stepped forward; good will overpowering her own nerves and inabilities.

It was Gideon. He was sitting on a very large stone, and his face was buried in his paws. With every shuddering sob, Judy could watch his chest shake. She wasn't sure what to do. He'd bullied her for years, been an absolute nightmare to go to school with, and he was a fox. Foxes didn't look for bunnies to comfort them.

She rocked on her little feet and debated running home as if she hadn't seen him, but just that amount of sadness broke her heart. Judy had never cried like that, openly, wetly, and heartbrokenly. She'd never had reason to. The young bunny preferred to fight than to cry, but really other than bravely being the sole supporter of her dreams, there was nothing crushing about her life. No one left her in pieces, and Gideon Gray was surely in pieces.

"Gideon?" She spoke up; her throat closing around the word as if she could just suffocate it and not say it. Judy walked up to the rock; everything within her telling her to run away. This was for adults to handle or foxes; an eight year old bunny wasn't meant to comfort an eight year old fox. Nevermind, the fact that he had been bullying her for as long as she could remember.

"J-Judy?" When he looked up at her, she saw a kind of terror, not unlike humiliation and its eagerness to push others away. She sat down beside him, relieved for once to be small. "Go away."

"Gideon, you're hurt." Judy answered, wondering if there was anything more that she could say to him. It seemed far too hard to come up with any better words.

"I'm not." He moved towards her as if to say that he wasn't bleeding anywhere, that he didn't have any broken bones or bruising or anything of the sort.

"In your heart." Stubborness held her in place. "Gideon, what happened?" It still seemed a bit odd to be comforting her bully, someone that had caused her pain numerous times.

"I-It's nothing. Go back to your burrow with your f-family!" He argued, even though she could still see the tears fall that he worked to hide and his quaking chest.

"No. You need someone." Judy tried.

"I don't need anyone. I'm a loner, Judy, and a predator." He pretended to be menacing but for once he failed to be. Gideon was too tired and too sad to even succeed at the attempt.

"Okay, you don't need anyone." Judy sighed, breathing through her nose, trying to think of something that her parents might say if this was her. "It will be okay."

"That's easy to say when you have a family to go home to!" He looked desperate to make her run off and leave him to his misery.

"You don't have a family?" Judy couldn't imagine not having parents or brothers and sisters. She'd had more siblings than she could count or imagine, and her parents supported her dreams more than others tended to. They still couldn't imagine them, but Judy knew that she could pull through and be the first bunny cop anyway.

"Not anymore." He finally admitted, slumping in defeat. "They died."

"Oh." Judy didn't know what to say to that at all. "So, you're alone?"

Gideon winced, and Judy regretted her words, "Yeah. We buried my dad today." He didn't say that his mom had went into the ground just a year before, and he was an only child.

Judy wasn't sure what she felt, maybe it was sympathy for her long time bully. Her heart seemed to twist and pull tight like a wet towel. She tentatively reached out and placed a paw on Gideon's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'll help you out."

"You're not a police officer, and I don't need saving." Gideon had told her point blankly.

She knew that she wasn't a cop yet, and she wasn't trying to go cop on him! Judy just couldn't take the thought of anyone being this alone and this sad, and besides, not having a family never quite registered in her mind.

"Okay." Judy stood up. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Probably not." Gideon answered for her.

"Okay." Judy still wasn't quite sure what to say to all of this, so she just walked home. The walk seemed extra long and really, really quiet. It was like all sound had been hushed right out of the trees and the homes and everything. Judy had way more time than she felt like she needed to think.

* * *

"Gideon Grey has no more family left." She blurted out when she almost got grounded that night for sneaking out. So many siblings, and they always knew when one was missing and just who it was.

"What?" Her mother asked, and Judy suddenly wondered if that was the wrong thing to say.

"His dad just died." Judy muttered, staring at her feet. "He has no one else."

"Does he need a home?" Her father asked, and when she looked up, Judy realized that she wasn't the only one with an open heart to even someone that had caused plenty of sadness in their lives.

"I-I think so." Judy hadn't asked, but Gideon said that he was alone.

Her father who had often considered foxes to be rather dangerous predators and rarely if ever stepped willingly near one stood up to leave the burrow. "Where did you see him?"

"Just in town, on a big stone. It's not a very comfortable place to sit." It really wasn't. Judy hadn't thought that he'd picked a good seat, but knew that when you were sad, you didn't care whether something was comfortable or not.

Her dad didn't come home until he came home with Gideon Grey just about an hour later. Judy still wonders what her dad told him that night. She can't quite find it in herself to ask though.

* * *

After that, followed many months of trying to adopt him, which lead to court trials among other things. No one was quite sure what to do or think when a pretty much full bunny home wanted to adopt a fox kit. They had to go through what seemed like a million loops and beg and plead, before Gideon was permitted to be her brother and her parents' son.

Actually, his last name ended up changing to Hopps though everyone knew that the Hopps were bunnies. Gideon Hopps was the one and only exception to that rule. He spent many days when he felt less like a mess that first year learning to bake pies from her mother.

Judy and Gideon even walked to school together, and she, at first, didn't know what to think of a fox as a brother. When her desire to help a wounded classmate slipped away, she wasn't sure how to be a 'twin' sister to a fox. She'd spend hours lost in thought trying to figure out what this meant.

Judy still hadn't decided how to be a fox's sister when she gave up overthinking it and just treated him like a bunny. She'd tease him, hop away, race him, and just treat him like a baby brother. He was older than her by a few months, but she called him her younger twin brother after the years had started to fly by.

Even so, she was probably the only bunny ever, not counting her bunny siblings, to have a fox as a brother. He even supported her when she finally did leave for the Police Academy in Zootopia, and she supported him when he decided to bake professionally.

Judy never considered having Gideon Hopps as her brother to be abnormal or to even be weird. It was life, and her kind of normal. Besides, sometimes the best brothers were chosen to be your brother and end up becoming your best friend too.


End file.
